Computer and network systems such as personal computers, workstations, server systems, and cloud storage systems, typically include data storage systems for storing and retrieving data. These data storage systems can include data storage devices, such as hard disk drives, solid state storage devices, tape storage devices, and other mass storage devices.
The recent demand for digital contents and big data are fueling the need for more, denser, and larger data centers. Power dissipation of data centers is a matter of concern. Data centers are frequently constrained by the allowed peak power at their disposal. Peak power capacity is important, because both the power conditioning and distribution infrastructure and the cooling systems must be sized based on their combined peak power requirements.
Data center operators oversubscribe data centers power supply with more machine servers and users than the maximum allowable at any time to maximize their utilization. Power capping has been employed in data centers to set maximum power usages for the various computing systems contained in the data centers. However, power dissipation by individual components of the computing systems is limited to very coarse adjustments, such as sleep modes or powering down of unused computing elements.